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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
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Unpopular Opinion
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While I’ve never seen nor heard them used before, I’m with you on existing slurs being slightly tweaked for use in other contexts (e.g. wetback to wireback) being in poor taste.
What are the racist or homophobic roots of “clanker”? Sharing the “-er” suffix with another word doesn’t count, that’s just the nature of language.
You know what clanker and clanka is a play on. It's not a mystery. Maybe George Lucas or whoever slipped it in to a game in 2005 thought it was cute, but we all know the wordplay behind it.
I genuinely do not. “clank” is not a minority group that I am aware of, nor does it sound remotely close to one.
If you’re trying to draw a connection to “removed” and “nigga”, that’s quite a stretch and you’re grasping at straws.
“-er” is a suffix that gets used for a thing of person that does something. The robots go clank, that’s it.
https://www.thedailystar.net/star-youth/news/troubling-ethos-behind-anti-ai-rhetoric-4064471
The way it's used with people making comments on "my clankas" and the "hard r" is a simple twist on the most popular slur against black people. The vast majority of people use it knowingly. It's now used as a thin veil on racism against children. They weren't calling a child a ni**** they were calling an AI a clanker while staring meaningfully at the child and laughing.
Using these terms in these ways does nothing to make society better or more welcoming, and it does actively harm people. It's fucked up to see it constantly, and it's fucked up that any time you try to speak out against it you have a swarm of people down voting and mocking because holding on the the shitty slur they've decided they like using the most is more important to them than it's impact on actual other humans.
Concerning a subject matter that is unequivocally about racial undertones in US culture, your chosen source to cite is… a Bangladeshi publication?
Look into ownership of this news outlet and I think you’ll find out answer as to why they might be looking to stir up controversy around the use of derogatory terms towards technology like AI.
Spoiler: It’s the ultra-wealthy again
This is an example of the genetic fallacy. You're ignoring the content itself to complain about it's origin. It's hardly the only place on the internet that says something similar, and the content is well written. It does a great job of listing the slurs and it's point is that maybe bigotry is a bad thing.